


what if I'm changing?

by sp8ce



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Human, Childhood Friends, F/M, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up Together, Love, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-31
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:08:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24473308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sp8ce/pseuds/sp8ce
Summary: Love is the only exception to time, you believe. It almost feels like an antonym. But of everyone in the world, you thought he’d never laugh at you.
Relationships: Sollux Captor & Aradia Megido
Comments: 3
Kudos: 3





	what if I'm changing?

You think about everything extremely conceptually. You dance around concepts and feel them like they’re tangible. You can feel the way time layers and splits and ties into what it is, the narrative endings and the way everything turns upon into itself, everything so horrifically unique that every moment is death, yet so caught inside cycles that it all repeats itself simultaneously. You can sense realms like they’re condensation. You walk around life with a paradoxical sense of clarity and confusion. 

One concept you’ve spent the most time thinking about is love. It almost feels like the antonym of time, but that’s not at all true. It’s just the only exception. And you’ve made peace with endless endings and constellations made from moments. But you don’t think you could if there wasn’t this one exception. Time can’t touch love. There’s no story to it, no start, no end, no middle. We might place these concepts on love because it’s  _ all we know,  _ but that doesn’t matter. Love is beyond all that.

It’s the thing that matters to you the most. 

And there’s no one you love like him.

He gets lost in the endings. It’s like all he can see. He sees the worst in everything instead of seeing it all. You think he can see it all, but he refuses to, because it’s safer to fall back into doom. You think you’ve been a nice balance to him, and he’s a nice balance to you. Because you see how everything is in its formation, but he purposely breaks things down to their barest forms. You’re both matched together by your patterns, but he’s full of deduction and you’re full of induction. You’re made of so much abstraction sometimes you think you could disappear from everything and disintegrate into the universe, while he gets so caught up in reality and significance you don’t know how he can handle his own suffering. You’re both each other’s anchors. 

You really love him like no one else.

He’s the type of person who’ll engage you in all your interests and partake in beliefs he definitely doesn’t share. He’s the type of person who has love in his eyes while you talk about the fairies and the mass extinctions. And you could listen to him ramble on about anything for hours, like he just needs to talk and talk. He’s so full of drama and emotions and incessant eccentricities. You don’t know what a world could be like without growing up sharing this life with him. He’s your best friend.

Everyone thinks you’re in love with him. Which isn’t true. Why does everyone devalue friendship? How are forms of love different? You’ve known him since he was six years old and never once have the two of you been separable. Do they think you had the hots for him as a little child? It’s ridiculous, you think, to not view love like it in its purest form: love. Maybe that’s the one thing you do like deducing down to its truest form. But then again, of course, there are things you’ve formed opinions inspired by him. Because you’ve loved him nearly your entire life. 

Which is why when you’re sixteen, and it’s been nearly a decade since you decided you’d never let him go, that when he starts avoiding you and acting different, hickies on his neck, that you wonder if perhaps, actually, people were right to turn love romantic. Because best friendships don’t have shit on infatuation.

You’re not jealous, you’re just upset because he didn’t even tell you. He just started disappearing. He still always texts you back and sits with you at lunch, but his entire affect is different. The way he’s acting is unlike anything you’ve ever seen before. He acts all jolty and weird, and he’s avoidant, but when he does talk to you, he doesn’t sound like himself, and he speaks faster than he even usually does, like there’s this pressure that’s taking him over. Maybe you shouldn’t have expected your childhood friend to hang out with you every day for the rest of your life, maybe that’s why people turn love romantic, to make it more singular (but hey, haven’t the two of you been almost that? Even if you didn’t have romantic feelings for him?). But it’s killing you because you didn’t really ever prepare for this, for him to not ask you to come over after school or remind you to go up to that hill with the ruins and circles.

You walk up, later into dusk than advisable, tears down your face leaving black tracks from your dark makeup. Is this why he has to see the worst? To know what to do when something like this happens? It’s not like you haven’t suffered plenty in your life, but maybe your relationship with him made you feel untouchable in some ways, your belief and your philosophies aside.

But when you get up to the top of the hill, you see him there,  _ inside one of the circles _ . It has these piles of stones in it, that even you haven’t dared to touch, and he’s actively  _ kicking them over _ . You can’t believe what you’re seeing, him in his worn-down grey jeans in the blue light, violently attacking forces you’ve talked at length about. It strikes fear in you, but it also strikes a wave of anger you’ve never felt before towards him in your life. 

“ _ Sollux _ ?” you yell, your stunned confusion and your anger making your tone more caustic than he’s probably ever heard before aimed at him. He stops in his tracks to look at you perplexed. He doesn’t say anything, just staring at you, and you wonder if he’s actually staring through you, if he can’t see you, and you’re worried he’s taken this too far. 

He kicks some rocks on the ground he’s displaced from the pile despite clearly hearing your voice, though. 

“What the  _ fuck  _ are you doing?” Your hands are shaking in rage. You can’t even remember a time when you’ve been angry at him. But he’s also never once intentionally done anything he’d know would harm you.

“Oh, you know,” he responds, looking at you fully, and yeah, he could see you for sure. His voice is bitter vitriol. “Just begging to be taken away.” He smiles brightly at you, poisonous. 

“Are you..” your voice is low, now, in your rage. “Are you  _ mocking me _ ?” He squints at you. Is he really that surprised that you would be angry and hurt?

“I’m mocking everything,” he says. It’s vague, and he doesn’t elaborate. 

“Just, just get out of there! Don’t make me drag you out!” 

“Oh, like you’d come in here.” Okay, yeah, so he is mocking you.

“I will if it means saving your sorry ass even if I should just let you learn the fucking consequences for your actions.”

“I’ve never heard you this angry, AA. You must really hate me. Huh? Can’t protect me from myself anymore. Guess the way things change can turn into devastation. Or maybe this will all just be a fucking relief to you.” He sits down in the circle. Your hands are trembling, but not just from rage.

“What are you on about?” you say. Can he hear your fear now?

“You know I’m not even in this realm right?” he says. You can’t tell if you’re hit with petrification or immobilising anger, but it feels like a frozen heart attack.

“Are you still mocking me?” you ask. You walk over to the stones, flowers, and moss that make the circle up, scared you’ve actually lost him. He doesn’t respond to you or even look at you until you tentatively push your hand over the boundaries to grab him, to which he reacts instantly, jerking away from you, hitting his head on the stone pile behind while recoiling.

“What the fuck are you doing, stay away from me,” he says. Then he smirks, and you never realised just how much of a weapon his bitterness could be. “Don’t want to be taken away now, do you?”

“Why are you doing this?” you finally ask. 

“Am I really here, AA? Ever thought of that?” he asks, and the very thought he could insinuate you’re hallucinating drives you into a fury you’ve never felt, before, period. You can’t believe he’d mock you, try to  _ hurt _ you, you don’t understand any of it, but you do know you’ve never been angrier in your life.

You grasp at the clasp of the necklace he gave you two years ago to symbolise your undying friendship. It has a bug preserved into it. And you throw it, hard, at the side of his arm. He turns to look at you because he’d been staring at the stones again instead of you, but when he sees what you threw at him, he looks at you in an expression of utter shock. Then, his entire body starts shaking, and at first, you think he’s sobbing, and it draws you out of your fury momentarily with the urge to comfort him, before you realise he’s laughing.

He’s laughing at you.

Of everyone in the world, you thought he’d never laugh at you.

But he doesn’t stop, not when he looks at you, hysterical laughter neverending, when he sees the tears going down your face, he just keeps laughing.

Something in you breaks, shards piercing your chest. Like every part of your being is deflated and cutting. You turn away from him. It’s getting too dark, you both shouldn’t be up here this time of the day, anyways. He should head back too, you think.

At least you know exactly how much practise he has navigating these hills.

That thought makes you sob harder.


End file.
